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Weighing station with conveyor element

Weighing station with conveyor element description/claims

The subject matter of the present invention relates to a weighing station for weighing and sorting objects to be weighed, which objects are to be transported further after or during the weight measuring procedure.

It is known from weighing technology that the weight of the products or objects manufactured in production processes must be ascertained, i.e., that the products must be weighed. In this context, the weighing procedure used should take the shortest time possible, on the one hand, yet the requirements with respect to the accuracy of the weighing result are very high, on the other hand. Especially in the production of tablets and/or capsules, the manufacture takes place at very high throughput rates, with the requirements with respect to the accuracy of the weight of each individual tablet and/or capsule (in general: “object”) at the same time being very high.

DE 198 19 395 C1 discloses an apparatus for weighing hard gelatin capsules in which each separate capsule is transported into and discharged from a weighing area by means of a transport pawl and a blade-type wheel. The degree of design complexity of such an apparatus is very high, and the device is designed especially for specific capsule shapes.

Another apparatus for weighing hard gelatin capsules is known from DE 44 19 488 A1, in which a transfer mechanism is used to transport the products to be weighed into a weighing area where they are dropped onto the weighed support base. A swivel element separates the objects from the transfer mechanism. Again, the design complexity is relatively high, and the means of guiding and/or transporting the capsules are highly dependent on the shape of the capsules.

DE 697 20 886 T1 describes an apparatus for measuring the weight of capsules which comprises, among other things, a sliding transfer mechanism, a weighing mechanism and a discharge mechanism and therefore which also has a complex design and is dependent on the shape of the capsules.

U.S. Pat. No. 6,887,611 discloses a transport mechanism for capsules which are fed to and discharged from a weighing apparatus. Again, the capsules determine the complex design of the apparatus and the strictly format-dependent construction of the apparatus.

JP 3-282221 discloses a weighing mechanism with horizontally disposed conveyor drums for the gravity-determined sorting of weighed products.

EP 0 501 208 B1 describes a weighing apparatus in which a feeding mechanism targetedly feeds the products to be weighed to a weighing position and from there subsequently discharges them.

All apparatuses mentioned above have a high design complexity and do not weigh the individual objects rapidly enough.

Thus, the problem to be solved by the present invention is to make available a weighing station, by means of which the objects to be weighed are rapidly weighed and transported further, which weighing station can be used regardless of the format of the objects to be weighed and which, moreover, has a simple design.

This problem is solved with a weighing station as in claim 1.

The present invention is based on the recognition that a weighing station should preferably comprise a conveyor element which is used to transport a weighed object further. This conveyor element can be rotated about an axis and has a number of segmented areas around the axis so that during the weighing procedure, the object to be weighed comes to rest on a support element in such a segmented area. The support element which rests on a load receptor transfers the gravity force of the thus supported object to be weighed into the load receptor. The load receptor picks up the gravity forces in the direction of a load transfer direction [sic] which normally runs in a vertical direction.

According to the present invention, the conveyor element for transporting an object further after or during the weighing procedure is designed so that, in a conveying step, it can be rotated by a specifiable angle of rotation a about its axis. To this end, the object is enclosed by the segmented area of the conveyor element in such a manner that said conveyor element, by rotating about its axis, moves the object forward.

According to the present invention, the axis of the conveyor element is disposed at an angle β<90° with respect to the load transfer direction. This offers the advantage that conveying forces, which act on said angle element as the object is transported further, act only partially or not at all in the load transfer direction. As a result, the load receptor is subjected to lower or no interference factors which can develop as a result of the transport of the object away from the support surface since at least one portion of this conveying force acts perpendicular with respect to the load transfer direction and therefore does not act upon the load receptor.

In addition, the conveyor element is designed so that while transporting the object further, said conveyor element can transport the object optionally into at least two different discharge areas, i.e., it is able to sort the objects. A first area can be set aside for receiving objects that meet a specific weighing criterion, while another area can be set aside for objects which do not meet this criterion. The advantage is that in this manner, as each weighed object is transported further, the objects are sorted and/or sorted out, with the objective that the conveyor element feeds the objects to one or the other discharge area in accordance with specifiable criteria. In both cases, the transport is implemented by means of a rotation of the conveyor element about its axis. Thus, this type of compact weighing station has the advantage that it combines the functions of weighing and sorting out within a relatively small space, without requiring that the latter step be carried out in a downstream procedure. Only the objects that meet certain weight criteria leave the weighing station and move into the first discharge area, while the other objects are sorted out while still within the weighing station. This further simplifies and accelerates the production process.

This type of design makes it possible to weigh largely randomly shaped objects simply, accurately and rapidly and subsequently or simultaneously to transport them further by means of a rotation of the conveyor element. In addition, the weighed object is transported by the conveyor element only partially or not at all into the load transfer direction so that lower or no interference factors in this direction result from said transport.

If angle β=0, the axis and the load transfer direction run parallel to each other. In this case, the transport is caused exclusively by forces that run perpendicular to the load transfer direction and thus do not at all act upon the load receptor. This ensures that the measurement result is optimally protected against such interference effects.

Another useful embodiment of the present invention provides that during the transport, one segmented area at a time sweeps over the area of the support element in which the object to be weighed is located. Thus, the conveyor element moves relative to the support element, and while sweeping over the above-described area, moves the object located therein away from the support area. The conveyor element can be designed so that it sweeps over the support area without making contact with said area. This is especially useful when the conveyor element is a component separate from the support element and is not weighed by or does not rest on the load receptor. In this case, it should not generate any forces in the load transfer direction. Otherwise (if the support element and the conveyor element are jointly supported by the load receptor), trailing brushes or the like might be used, in which case said brushes can come into contact with the support element.

An especially useful embodiment of the present invention provides that the segmented areas of the conveyor element be disposed around its axis in such a manner that after a completed transport step, another, preferably a neighboring, segmented area is available to transport the next object further. This means that as a result of the rotation of the conveyor element, the sector in which the currently weighed object is disposed is swiveled by the angle of rotation α about the axis so that now a different segmented area receives the next object to be weighed. The advantage is that the transport can take place quasi-continuously, without requiring the conveyor element to perform a forward and a backward movement when transporting each individual object. Simply by rotating the conveyor element by the angle α, the object enclosed by said conveyor element is transported further, on the one hand, and at the same time, a new segmented area is made available, on the other hand, without requiring an additional separate movement. This speeds up the weighing and transporting process considerably.

According to an especially useful embodiment, the segmented areas are uniformly disposed about the axis, and the angle of rotation α is defined by the number n of all segmented areas according to the formula:

α=360°/n

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Weighing scales

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